#beaboutitbritney

PRIESTESS OF THE VOID

mortal

on her radar

yr teeth yr tongue

like a princess supposed to get it

the earth rips open

watch yr fingers boy you might get burned

they keep watching

do we dare make the descent? 

don’t worry i’ll keep this little secret 

how many sisters have come back from the underworld?

if 

u’ve ever been to heaven this is twice as nice

my body feels like an inferno

i must confess

i like this part

Kamita,

bay area, 

queer, 

favorite britney spears track is “don’t let me be the last to know”

There are mountains. Mountains and darkness. I was lost there. I lived there for a very long time. 

When you live like that you forget about humans. You forget about society. You become strange. I became that without noticing. 

The first year I was the same. I still was normal. The second year I began to get strange. I developed weird habits. I noticed that they were weird because they were not normal to me. If I saw someone I knew acting like how I acted I would have thought they were strange. But I was me and I am not going to think I am strange. Nobody thinks that they themselves are strange.

But I was, I guess. I did not care. I still do not. That is not what concerns me—how strange or not strange I am. I honestly never cared about that kind of thing. 

There was a time maybe that I cared but that time is long gone. Now my concerns are surviving the night without losing myself to the night.

I used to think I cared about being there. But now that I have been there I am glad I am not. The art world is a soul eating machine. I was the meat. They ate me. They ate me up. But I survived because I got cloned.

I know you know about the Mona Lisa. I was the model. I fucked Leonardo DaVinci. I know you would like to think it was something a lot more romantic but that is basically what it was. He was really good in bed. He had a great cock. Not that that means anything. There are so many guys who have great cocks who are shit in bed. But he did his time, with the oral, with the foreplay. He really knew how to make a woman feel wanted. And that is what I wanted more than anything—to feel wanted.

But this story is not about him and his skills in bed. Like I said, I was the model for that famous painting. 

I thought I was safe. I thought I was good. But I was not. I was not safe. Slow but fast. It happened.

It started as love. It ended with a trap in oils.

It’s hard. It hurts. To just go on. Like a lie about truth. Liars deceive liars. Its dark. Why do it but they do.

But the darkness takes the roads it takes. You lack the vision. I have it but I am in abundance of the heartbreak.

It feels fine until it’s not, until you see you have destroyed yourself for someone else. For nothing. For male ego. For art. For history. 

For legacy.

I never got to die properly because I am living still in that painting. He did this to me. He captured that part he liked. That part he feared. Through alchemy he cloned my essence in his painting before disposing of my body in the Seine. 

But I never sleep. I watch people watching me in the Louvre every single goddamn day. Looking at me looking at you. I see you. What do you see? I am the dark mirror, but you are the reflection.

Leza Cantoral is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books. She is the author of Trash Panda and Cartoons in the Suicide Forest. She is the host of Get Lit With Leza, a podcast where she talks to cool ass writers. Find her oversharing on Twitter, IG & FB @lezacantoral​

What’s your favorite Britney Spears track? “Unusually You”

Britney Letterboxd

The performance of The Beat Goes On in Hawaii

is avant-garde and peak weirdney. i've said it before but, 

britney dance battling herself will forever be one of the most iconic things ever

britney basically erupting from fire like she damn right should

I was gonna be nice and give this a full star, 

but that Jon Voight segment was just too creepy...it is devastating britney jean spears 

hasn't performed the gay-friendly anthem 'anticipating' in 17 years

Wish I could give 83372728282 stars. 

Someone needs to bring back the oops theatrics

the part where britney dances with herself.

iconic. a religious experience, 

even including the disturbing live vocals on everytime

I've lost an inordinate number of brain cells.

The 'disturbing vocals' of her songs Everytime and Shadow didn't really bother me.

The costumes are ugly, the choreography is half-baked, and the sound mixing is trash. 

A queer bonanza of opulence and infinite possibility.

There's a confidence and stage presence that she never fully recovered 

post-breakdown, and it's nice to see it here for one final time. 

most of my criticism is not really her fault. 

Q U E E N

ngl this breathe on me performance had 

a huge impact on teenage me discovering my sexuality, 

not to be dramatic but i wouldn't be who i am today without 

ms britney spears. yep....i'm still on my britney bullshit

i'm not even ashamed lmao

steam me like a pot full of vegetables

But the lip syching is awful at times 

Poor Britney, dead behind the eyes

To each their own, but to me, seeing someone dance 

around in their undies is weird. 

Carrie Hunter / SF /  "Til the World Ends"

{It's the 90's : It's tang. It's 792-1234, at the dial tone the time is.}

{Kill Me. 

i feel so incredibly sad. no one understands me. sees me. the only things that care about me are burdens i never asked for. a life i never asked for; forever reminding me of this irony, driving me mad. isolated by my conscious ability to see this folly. crafting a concise art in balanced rituals, routines and escape routes in a labyrinth existing through biological idiosyncratic fashion pronounced by depressive flair. i am a mad house no one wants to come near, used, neglected, infamous and feared, a curious waste. kill me.}

{Speed. just like we can’t speed without avoiding turmoil, we can’t relinquish the control we can maintain over our emotions thrills and whims lest we find out their true canon power; a universe a reflection of their collisions}

{                        .being here today is like having a knife up to my throat in what i thought would be a different situation entirely,   

                        one i paid for with money i earned, only to be stuck bleeding to earn more for the pleasure of pain.                           }

Cuhsandra is a writer based in SF and her favorite Britney Spears track is “Hot as Ice”

THIS RING I 

catting for It

yours truly

I dance for

the feel of nth

persons’

peepholes in the

word mask meaning right

time to strike

a match

 again

I forget something

Britney said

or design inhibitions

fancy like my hand

“under my own skirting” effort

to grasp what

I want a (word)

search

for sincere etymologies of self

& love

teetering

 grasping you

to keep from

losing our (        )

slow dance

this sentence

a circle

this ring I

wed

  BOYS

kick me

again

make me

never forget

where father

hides

his hair

and fear of

balloon animals

howl of gender

skin of lies

goodbye

fragile skeletons

your rattle

betrays you

by gaslight

less a moth

than dog fight

I bitten

you bark

lol a tongue

trick or

finger me

seen queen

for a verse

this is becoming

ladylike

to shove

a straight-legged

xenomorph

screaming out

an airlock

sir

you can’t

heart

the feels

that’s queer

for I unfriend you

for wings

because lashes

to flutterbys

beat hard

leave bruises

yes pops

I am beautiful

for a minute

you fell

to your knees

no one heard it

—and could breathe

Levis Keltner lives in St. Louis and on Instagram @leviskeltner. "Lucky" and "3" are their favorite Britney tracks.

Writer, LevisKeltner.com

Editor-in-Chief, Newfound.org